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- By Levi Rickert
Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo), the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Shelly C. Lowe left her position on Wednesday “at the direction of President Donald Trump,” the agency said in a statement.
“I can confirm that, at the direction of President Trump, Shelly Lowe has departed her position as chair of N.E.H.,” a spokesman for the agency, Paula Wasley, said in a statement. She said Mr. McDonald would serve as acting chairman “until such time as the president nominates and the Senate confirms a new N.E.H. chairman.”
Lowe showed her commitment to Indian Country by attending several of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s “Road to Healing” tour stops. Lowe was instrumental in securing approximately $2.2 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities in grants to extend the reach and impact of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. This includes $411,000 in funding to 14 Tribal Nations and organizations for projects that shed light on the history of boarding schools and their impact on local communities.
Lowe grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Ganado, Arizona. She is currently a member of the National Council on the Humanities, an appointment she received from President Obama. Her career in higher education has included administrative roles such as executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program, assistant dean in the Yale College Dean's Office, and director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University.
Prior to these positions, she spent six years as the graduate education program facilitator for the American Indian Studies Programs at The University of Arizona.
Lowe has served in a variety of leadership roles nationally, most recently as a member of the University of Arizona Alumni Association Governing Board and as a member of the Challenge Leadership Group for the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship. She has served on the board of the National Indian Education Association and as a Board of Trustee for the National Museum of the American Indian. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, a Master of Arts in American Indian Studies, and has completed doctoral coursework in Higher Education from the University of Arizona.
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